Do you mean a login prompt? You can take a look in /etc/inittab and use getty's instead of bash invocations. If you need more info, check out mikshaw's thread on this - it's probably what you're looking for.

This is what I do to get four virtual terminals with login prompt. I've used ssh a couple of times on this system without trouble, although the how-to does not cover ssh. You will need to start sshd yourself in order to acces the system that way. Trying to use runlevel 2 might actually be your problem, though, since that how-to was designed for runlevel 5. You could modify inittab to work for 2, but you'd get the same result as in runlevel 5. Runlevels are not "set in stone"; they're simply provided as a way to easily switch from one environment to another without manually changing things every time. You can set up any runlevel to behave like any other.